In recent years, users have acquired and utilized various contents in portable information terminals such as mobile phones or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants).
This allows a user, for example, to enjoy an acquired game without limitations on locations or in time, and to acquire map data for use with a GPS (Global Positioning System) function to check the current position of himself/herself.
In this case, for example, control of behaviors of a main character a of the game or checking of a route to a destination on the map are typically performed by operating up, down, left, and right buttons provided on a terminal or buttons around them according to the situation.
On the other hand, for mobile phones in recent years, mobile phones with cameras having a function of capturing images have been put into practical use associated with improved performance. In a mobile phone with a camera, an image can be captured through a built-in camera section and the captured image can be displayed in a display section or attached to an e-mail for transmission to another mobile phone.
In such a mobile phone with a camera, it is contemplated that usability of the mobile phone can be further improved if an image editing operation can be performed such as scaling (that is, a change in magnification) and move of a captured image.
In conventional terminals, however, individual buttons are provided independently to be spaced from one another, so that it is difficult, for example, to operate the terminal smoothly while it is held by a hand, presenting a problem that its operability is very poor when a game or the like is played.
In addition, some are in the form in which a command is input by inclining a stick-like member slightly protruding from a surface of a housing in upward, downward, leftward, and rightward directions. However, the stick-like member causes an entry which does not necessarily reflect an intention of a user accurately, for example, although the user manipulates it with an intention of moving a cursor in the upward direction, it is moved actually in an up-right direction, resulting in a problem that considerable skill is needed to be able to perform subtle operations accurately.
Furthermore, in a case of inputting the aforementioned image editing operation in a mobile phone, a scale-up button and a scale-down button for an image, and two rotation buttons (right rotation and left rotation) are needed in addition to move buttons in four directions of upward, downward, rightward and leftward, causing a problem that many buttons are required for operations to result in poor usability.
Moreover, a problem is presented that rotation operations of an image by the buttons are not intuitive and cause difficulty in performing fine adjustments of angles to lead to poor usability.